Treasures that scientists keep on ice

Tyrannosaurus rex: predator or media hype?

Yesterday I encountered the question that, as a scientist who has studied a certain chunky Cretaceous carnivore a lot, most deflates me and makes me want to go study cancer therapeutic methods or energy sources that are alternatives to fossil fuels (but I’d be useless at either). I will explain why this is at the end of the post.

The question stems from a new discovery, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and thus expected to be one of the more important or exciting studies this year (no, I’m not going to get into the issue here of whether these “high impact” journals include the best scientific research or the most superficial or hyped “tabloid” science; they publish both, and not in mutual exclusivity). It’s a broken Tyrannosaurus rex tooth embedded in a duckbill dinosaur’s tail bone, which healed after the injury, showing that the animal survived the attack.

If you’re with me so far, you might be making the logical leap that this fossil find is then linked to the hotbed of furious controversy that still leaves palaeontology in crisis almost 100 years after Lambe suggested it for the tyrannosaur Gorgosaurus. If the hadrosaur survived an attack from a T. rex, then T. rex was a habitual predator and OMG JACK HORNER AND OTHERS BEFORE HIM WERE WRONG!

And you’d be right.

My encounter with the question stemmed from an email from a science journalist (Matt Kaplan) that, as is normal practice, shared a copy of the unpublished paper and asked for comments from me to potentially use in an article he was writing for the science journal Nature’s news site. Here, then, was my off-the-cuff response:

“Ooh. I do have a pretty strong opinion on this. Not sure if you’d want to use it but here goes. I may regret it, but this hits my hot buttons for One of the Worst Questions in All of Palaeobiology!

The T. rex “predator vs. scavenger” so-called controversy has sadly distracted the public from vastly more important, real controversies in palaeontology since it was most strongly voiced by Dr Jack Horner in the 1990s. I find this very unfortunate. It is not like scientists sit around scratching their heads in befuddlement over the question, or debate it endlessly in scientific meetings. Virtually any palaeontologist who knows about the biology of extant meat-eaters and the fossil evidence of Late Cretaceous dinosaurs accepts that T. rex was both a predator and scavenger; it was a carnivore like virtually any other kind that has ever been known to exist.

While the discovery is nice evidence, it is not particularly exciting in a scientific sense and is only one isolated element from species that lived for hundreds of thousands of years, which to me changes nothing and allows no generalizations about the biology of any species, only the statement that at one point in time a Tyrannosaurus bit a hadrosaur that survived the encounter. There is no real substance to the controversy that T. rex was “either” a predator or scavenger. It is just something that scientists drum up now and then to get media attention. I hope that soon we can move on to more pressing questions about the biology of extinct animals, but the media needs to recognize that this is just hype and they are being played in a rather foolish way; likewise scientists that still feel this is an exciting question need to move on. Maybe this specimen will allow that. But somehow my cynical side leads me to suspect that this “controversy” will just persist because people want it to, regardless of logic or evidence. (bold font added; see below)

Great galloping lizards, I am so tired of this nonsense. Maybe there is educational value in showing how science deals with provocative half-baked ideas about celebrity species, but scientists in the community need to speak up and say what the real science is about. It’s not about this “controversy”. Modern palaeontology is so much better than this.

Sorry for the rant. Maybe it’s too extreme but I’m just fed up with this non-issue! I suspect a huge proportion of our field feels similarly, however.”

(I later redacted a bit of it where I got a little too excited and used the word “curmudgeon”; a mistake, as that could be seen as ad hominem rather than a term of endearment, and this issue is about the science and not the people, per se. That bit is redacted here, too. I’ve also redacted a sentence in which I made an opinion on whether the paper should have been published in PNAS; that is mostly irrelevant here. I was not a reviewer, and authors/reviewers/editors have to make that decision. This would be a massive tangent away from what this blog post is intended to be about! I know some of the authors and don’t want to offend them, but this is about the science and how it is represented to the world, not about these particular authors or even this paper itself.)

Importantly, Kaplan’s story did include my skeptical quote at the end. I am curious to see how many other news stories covering this paper go that far.

Would a T. rex prey on, or just scavenge — or have a great time racing — a giant chicken? (art by Luis Rey)

I will stop right here and acknowledge that I’ve published a lot on a somewhat related topic: how fast a T. rex could run or if it could run at all. To me, that’s a great scientific question that has consequences not only for the predator/scavenger false dichotomy, but also for general theories of locomotor biomechanics (can an animal the size of a large elephant run as well as or better than said elephant? What are the thresholds of size and maximal running/jumping/other athletic abilities and how do they vary in different evolutionary lineages? And so on.). I’ll defend the validity of that question to the bitter end, even if it’s a question I’ve grown a little (but only a little) tired of and generally feel is about as well settled as these things can be in palaeontology (see my review here). I’ll also defend that it has been a real controversy (I have plenty of old emails, formal rebuttals submitted by colleagues, and other discourse as evidence of this) since I tackled it starting in 2002 and sort of finishing by 2011. I am sensitive about the issue of hyping my research up– this is something I’ve been careful about. I set a reasonable bar of how much is too much, check myself continuously with reflective thought, and I do not feel I have ever really crossed that bar, away from science-promotion into darker realms. This is partly why I’ve stopped addressing this issue in my current work. I feel like the science we’ve done on this is enough for now, and to keep beating the same drum would be excessive, unless we discovered a surprising new way to address the questions better, or a very different and more compelling answer to them.

“T. rex: scavenger or predator?” was controversial back in 1994 when Horner published “The Complete T. rex”, where he laid out his arguments. Brian Switek covered this quite well in his post on it, so I will not review that history. There was a big Museum of the Rockies exhibit about it that toured the USA, and other media attention surrounding it, so Horner’s name became attached to the idea as a result. Other such as Lambe and Colinvaux had addressed it before, but their ideas never seemed to gain as much currency as Horner’s did. But this post is not about that.

What this post is about is a consideration of why this is still an issue that the media report on (and scientists publish on; the two are synergistic of course), if most scientists aware of past debates are in good agreement that a T. rex was like most other carnivores and was opportunistic as a switch-hitting scavenger-predator, not a remarkably stupid animal that would turn down a proper meal that was dead/alive. Indeed, the Nature news piece has a juicy quote from Horner that implies (although I do not know if it was edited or if important context is missing) that he has been in favour of the opportunistic predator-scavenger conclusion for some time. Thus, as Switek’s article notes, even the strongest advocates of the obligate scavenger hypothesis(?) have changed their minds; indeed, that 2011 blog post intimates that this had already happened at least 2 years ago.

For many years, nothing has been published in the main peer-reviewed literature that favours that extreme “obligate scavenger” hypothesis. If I am wrong and there is a scientific debate, where are the recent papers (say within the past 5 years) that are strong, respectable arguments in favour of it? I contend that it is a dead issue. And if it is just about the middle ground; i.e. what percent of its time did a T. rex spend hunting vs. scavenging; we have no clue and may never know, and it’s not a very interesting question.

But who then is feeding off of this moribund equine; this defunct tyranno-parrot?

In thinking about my reply to the journalist over the past 2 days, I am reminded again of my general feeling that this is no longer a question of scientific evidence; the important bit in bold font above. Maybe we just like this “hypothesis” or the “controversy”, or maybe we’re lazy and don’t want to have to hunt for real debates in science.

But who are “the people?” I do not feel that The Public should be blamed; they are the people that The Scientists and The Media ostensibly are seeking to inform about what the state of modern knowledge and uncertainty is in science. So when I get asked about the controversy after a public lecture, I always try to go into detail about it. I don’t sigh and say “go Google it”. Nor do I do this to a journalist. Indeed, I’ve generally headed this issue off at the pass and added a blurb to press releases/webpages explaining my T. rex research to explain how it relates to the non-controversy; example here.

I have to begin turning my finger of accusation away from scientists and toward some of the media, because they must play a huge role in the shennanigans. Yes, scientists should know better then to play this up as a valid, heated, modern controversy. That is true. Yet I have a feeling that the balance of blame should also fall heavily on the side of media (general and science news) that continue to report on this issue uncritically as a real controversy. Thus the general public thinks it still is, and scientists/journals keep issuing papers/press releases that it is, leading to more reporting on this “controversy”, and the beast refuses to die. Switek’s article is a good counter-example of balanced coverage with clear application of critical thinking.

This is trivially different from other non-controversies in palaeontology such as whether birds evolved from a subgroup of theropod dinosaurs and hence are dinosaurs by virtue of descent (consensus = yes). So it is reflective of a broader problem of not calling a spade a spade.

And it’s embarassing, to a scientist, as my quote above expressed, to see dead controversies trotted out again and again, feeding the public perception that they are not dead.

That’s what leaves me frustrated. When do the shennanigans end?

I am reminded of a quote from a Seinfeld episode:

“Breaking up is like knocking over a Coke machine. You can’t do it in one push. You gotta rock it back and forth a few times, and then it goes over.”– Jerry, from the episode “The Voice”.

But this predator/scavenger relationship-from-hell leaves me, as a specialist working in this general area, feeling like I am trapped under that fridge. Help!

That’s why I started off this long post talking about feeling deflated, or disappointed, when asked this question. I do feel that way. I have to admit, I sometimes evenfeel that way when a sweet young kid asks me that question. Deep inside, I wish they wondered about something else. I wish that science had reached them with a deeper, more contemporary question. But when a journalist asks me how I feel about a new paper that revisits the “controversy”, I feel embarassed for palaeontology. Can’t we get past this? It makes us look so petty, mired in trivial questions for decades. But we’re not like that. This is a dynamic, exciting, modern field, but every news story about non-issues in palaeontology just perpetuate bad elements of palaeontology’s image.

To the scientists— why don’t we put our foot down more and say enough is enough, this is a dead issue? We have a role not only in peer review, but also in communicating our views about published work to the media when asked (AND when not asked, as in this blog post). But if you call them on it, do they listen? Which brings me to…

To the media (science/general journalists etc; I know this is a huge category and please don’t think I am blaming 100% of journalists or assuming they are all the same; they are not!)– if scientists tell you that a “controversy” is not such, at what point do you accept their judgement and kill the story, or at least use that quote? Does that ever happen? In what way are you at the mercy of senior editors/others in such issues? What power do you have? Is a shift in the balance of editorial power needed, or even achievable, in your case or in good exemplar cases? I’d really like to hear your experiences/thoughts. I am sure there is a lot I am not understanding, and I know many journalists are in a tough situation.

To the public— You’re often being misinformed; you are the losers in this issue. How do you feel about all it? (While this post focuses on a very tiny issue, the T. rex scavenger/predator unending drama, it is also about a broader issue of how the media perpetuates controversies in science after they have already gone extinct.)

What did this post have to do with freezers? Nothing. I’m just (H)ornery. Although I was once filmed for a planned Discovery Channel film about scientists who find a frozen tyrannosaur in polar regions and have to decide what to do with it before it slips into a chasm and is lost forever. Probably better that this never aired; it was cancelled. Segue to this post.

The Berkeley cast of the Wankel (MOR555) specimen of T. rex. Will we ever see the end of the predator/scavenger non-issue?

Yeah, as usual some scientists get cast as the somewhat-enthusiastic ones and others get to be the curmudgeons, based on what quotes are used from all the ones they provide. I didn’t say much positive about the topic, so the only options they had were to use negative comments or else to cut me.

As long as the public use media as the source for truthful information, we will have this problem. I have the same problem in my world; defending my truth from what is a pervasive but erroneous viewpoint that is based on false information. Good for you for being quoted in that article! I laughed at “great galloping lizards.”

Regardless of aaallll the other problems, how could the reviewers or editors let this out without some good 3D viz of the specimen. How cool would that at least be?!

The CT data is interesting in that there is plaster section all through the vertebrae and what looks to be plaster surrounding the tooth. What’s up with that? Where’s the pathopaleohisto? Was that a core they took out? Did they take the tooth out to study it? or did they count the denticles with it in situ?

Yeah it’s a missed opportunity to show the data. I did for a moment wonder, what if this was faked? It would be easy to spot, but that would be a bad outcome for everyone. Not that there is any evidence of fakery.

But maybe this is all coming up in the next extravaganza paper on the specimen?

Casey asks, “How could the reviewers or editors let this out without some good 3D viz of the specimen?”

But I noticed the abstract page says “This article is a PNAS Direct Submission”. Isn’t that the special magical shortcut PNAS has that allows some articles to avoid all that tedious messing about with peer-review?

… and speaking of Publications Behaving Badly, I was horrified to see the Nature News story using the subheading “Bone of contention”. Seriously, Nature News?

I think you are thinking of the old “communicated submission” option at PNAS, which was discontinued after a few odd papers made it through (e.g., the idea of caterpillars as the result of an unholy cross between a velvet worm and a butterfly).

In any case, I too was quite surprised that they didn’t have any good 3D viz of the specimen itself. A decent rotating movie could be made with about 5 minutes of work. Of course, if the paper stated that the data were archived at the museum where the specimen is held, we might be able to do something about it easily.

Glad to see that someone is finally tackling this controversy. I didn’t read all that you wrote (just the title actually) but I’m hoping that one day we’ll find the evidence which tells us whether T-Rex was a scavenger or a predator. I also heard that some scientists think that Brontosaurus might not have spent its whole life in the water. Perhaps you could write a post about this controversy?

In all seriousness, I feel your pain. From what I’ve read here and elsewhere, it must be incredibly frustrating dealing with the media in general.

Altho’ the media is many and varied, even the most august publications and responsible TV/radio programs look for some hook within a story to engage their audience. You must have to walk a fine line with your own media releases because, on the one hand, you would like as many people as possible to hear/read about your latest research, but on the other, know that if it seems dry or with no obvious application, media outlets are either not going to run with it, or they’ll bury it somewhere where hardly anyone will find it. It must be like Sysyphus trying to balance a boulder on the Ridge of Restrained Awesomeness between the valleys of Boring and Overhype.

Well, to be honest I like dealing with the media. They’re interesting to work with and can often be very smart, fun people. And it’s fun to see reactions from others to the media (the excited, enthusiastic kind). It’s the system that is frustrating, especially the market-driven decisions from on high and the swing of the pendulum between extremes of quality.

I was contacted today to do a brief live tv interview on this find on behalf of Museum Victoria (Melbourne). However it seems as yourself & others have dealt with the issue well enough as they cancelled soon after! There’s so many more cool, interesting things than this “non-troversy” as you say, if only they could ask about them.

As a M.O.P. when it comes to Dinosaurs, this fossil sounds interesting, just because it shows dinosaur interaction.

As a biologist (at heart) it seems obvious that most predators will switch between scavenging and hunting as the opportunity arises. It’s almost like there is some kind of stigma over scavenging, it’s not macho enough for a [i]T. rex[/i]?

Yes I think that’s part of the reason it is a popular “controversy” – it dismantles the macho image of T. rex, in a way. Reactions like “How dare Horner demote the majestic Tyrannosaurus from a tyrant king to a lowly Cretaceous janitor?” and so on.

One thing I did try to say to the various reporters is that while I consider the obligate scavenger hypothesis to be rejected, I do not consider it a “bad hypothesis.” That is, as classically formulated, it was based on a series of interrelated observations that required testing in order to falsify them. As such, that was good for dinosaur paleontology, and beats assuming the answer.

However, I also pointed out that for more than a decade we’ve been pretty secure in that hypothesis’ rejection, and that there are other more interesting (and unresolved!) hypotheses out there in paleontology.

That’s an important distinction. When I was working with Dave, Matt and Darren on our sauropod-necks-not-for-sexual-selection paper, we were refuting the hypothesis of Senter (2006). But while we obviously thought his hypothesis was incorrect, we were actively pleased at how carefully he’d laid it out. It made it much easier to falsify. On those terms, It was a good hypothesis — just a wrong one.

We must remember that even seasoned palaeontologists were at one time little kids drawn to the science by some point that interested them, and anything that catches the interest of a child and draws them to a scientific profession is good. I know as a child it was T. rex that first caught my eye and stirred my interest in dinosaurs, and primarily because it was a huge ferocious beast that killed and ate other huge beast. That’s the importance of the T.rex predator vs scavenger discussion: if we can find any evidence that keeps T. rex in the realm of a terrifying monster rather than a lumbering brute strolling around eating carrion, maybe we can continue to attract the attention of kids who’ll then stay around to become palaeontologists and study the real important stuff. The question may no longer be interesting to a seasoned palaeontologist, but to that little kid who may one day become one, it is very much an important issue. As far as the media goes, no matter how prestigious their credentials, they’re all about hype and excitement anyway.

See my comment below in reply to Joe. I don’t agree that any science that excites kids is a good thing. For the best science education, we should present the best and most modern science first and foremost, to the degree that it is comprehensible (and I think there is always something fresh and comprehensible worth exploring; it just takes effort to find it). Yes, this is naive idealism but that’s my personal choice. I like jousting with windmills 🙂

DAC makes good points about why it is important to some members of the public. to that I will add my experience that many, if not most teachers (here I am talking about k-12, but this applies to some university teachers as well) are using information that is seriously (as in decades, I have lost track of the number of dinosaur books older than I am I have seen in elementary schools) out of date. We cannot expect the public to keep up with current scientific debate. We may think something was over and done with years ago, but for most in the public, they haven’t heard about it yet. They remember the documentaries from years ago saying T. rex was a scavenger. They remember seeing the museum exhibits saying that, which to them, were not that long ago. They have no real reason to think the debate among scientists is essentially over and has been for some time.Sure, it’s ok to tell the media that something has not been a serious topic of debate for years and yes, it might get tiresome because we have talked about it for years, but remember that it takes a long time to get that information filtered through the public. They will hear about the latest press-grabbing scientific discovery quickly, but having it fit into the gestalt takes far, far longer.

As an addendum to this. David Hone was just talking on Archosaur Musings about trying to get people to realize that it takes years of work to prepare a fossil after getting it out of the ground. It seems to me it is kind of at cross-odds to on the one hand try to get people to understand how long research takes and then on the other to expect the public to keep up with current thought. While one might say that if it takes so long to get the data, then it should be even easier to keep up, a non-science person will think you are crazy if you try to argue what sounds like entirely inconsistent points of view.

It doesn’t help for the media to keep portraying dead controversies as dead. That just makes the public’s perception of them last longer, worsening the problem that the public has a hard time keeping up with science. The media is not the public; their job is to figure out what is news and what is not news, and then convey that news to the public. I think the problem is, “New fossil showing possible T. rex predation would have been a nice find to have had 20 years ago” is not a great headline. So some media have to ignore/be ignorant of history and present an old controversy as still alive, to make it more immediate and fresh.

I can’t condone misinformation. I do not think the status quo is what we should be content with, either; it is a self-fulfilling prophecy to say that (1) the public has a hard time keeping up with modern science, so (2) let’s not try to keep them up with modern science. If public perceptions of science are wrong, let’s change them! Not repeat past mistakes. Even if misinformation gets kids excited, there’s bound to be other non-misinformation that could take its place and get the kids excited. We don’t need misinformation to excite kids. Kids get excited about all kinds of cool stuff. I think the media has just set a low bar for what’s good, contemporary science news. But we needn’t settle for mediocrity. And some journalists are superb- look at what Yong or Zimmer or Switek or others are delivering to see how great science communication can be, without pandering to misinformation. I think there is indeed laziness at play here; instead of looking for new, exciting science to show kids how science is dynamic and always changing, some journalists just churn out the same rehash of the same old news.

Granted, a big problem is that a lot of journalists that cover science these days are not science journalists, so they may not have the training to assess what is news or not in the realm of science. But that is a bed that the media have made for themselves and they must lie in it, and if we don’t like it we should tell them. Meanwhile people who do know about the science need to keep them on their toes (e.g. through blogs like this), which is hard because we do not have the audience to reach many people. It is a tough situation and I don’t expect it to change soon, but I won’t sit quietly about it, either.

i am not saying condone misinformation, not at all, nor was I trying to imply we shouldn’t try to keep them updated. I agree with most of what you say, and certainly the journalists you mention do a spectacular job at striking a good balance whereas a lot of others fail. I think we should correct misinformation whenever we can. I think we should tell media and the rest of the public that debates like this are not really debates between scientists and that there is a strong consensus that has developed years ago. I am discussing our expectations of the audience and the timbre of our responses to inquiries. Taking a look at Yong and Zimmer and Switek, how often in their writings are they saying something is really cool and how often do they slam something because they think it is no no longer any scientific interest? Or mightn’t they try to spin it as a great opportunity to correct commonly held misinformation with a cool new find? Even when they do slam something, it is revealing what they slam and how they do so.

The media IS the public. As you stated, most journalists covering science stories these days are not science-trained at all. Moreover, they serve as a filter between scientists and the rest of the public. They have to deal not only with what scientists understand and think is important, but what the rest of the public understands and what they think as well. It behooves us to remember what the current status of public understanding is and deal from that perspective. I think it deserves repeating that in any effective communication, it does not matter what the communicator thinks, what matters is what the receiver gleans from that communication. If the receiver gets something different than what the communicator intended, it is a failed communication. If we fail at understanding and dealing with the knowledge and expectations of the audience, we will fail at communicating. If people come to us for information and we rebuff them because it is no longer of interest to us, does that help good communication? I don’t think so, unless your goal is to be the curmudgeon scientist.

I also don’t think the media discussing the hypothesis is misinformation, just not done well. The fossil was after all, recently published, making it current research. My approach to questions about the find was that the debate itself has not been taken seriously by most scientists for years because it has been pretty well established that T. rex,, like virtually all predators, was an active predator that did not turn up his nose at a free meal, scavenging when convenient. But it is rare to have a fossil that truly serves as a smoking gun conclusive sort of evidence and this fossil, if it is as presented, is that rare find that we can say is decisive, so it is a really cool find for that reason. I have enough appearances of the curmudgeon, I really can’t afford to add to that perception if i can avoid it.

Basically, you are right with almost everything you said. The question is what sort of face do we wish to present to the public and what sort of impact do we want to have? Can we use our knowledge of where our audience is mentally to get what we want across or do we simply rail against their not understanding or supporting us?

Apologies for the long-windedness. I am home sick and coincidentally reading a ton of stuff on science communication, both of which lead to excessive verbiage..

Thanks for the explanation, paleoaerie/Joe Daniel. I think we are agreed on most points. Switek has joined the non-troversy bashing here, so check it out: http://t.co/dT1h1E5ZzK
An important point is that we already had a smoking gun; Ken Carpenter reported in 1998 on a duckbill tail that seemed to have been bitten by a large predator and re-healed. I’ve heard some skepticism about it from scientists, but the claim has never been debunked. The current paper mentions it but sort of sweeps it under the carpet. But if Carpenter was right, we already had the smoking gun 15 years ago. And even then, the controversy was not even a real controversy in the scientific literature. It almost completely existed in the media/popular press.

It is cool to see the media engaging with the accusation, which comes not just from me but also many other paleontologists including commenters above.

Cool fossil, sure, but there are lots of those. The conclusions it presents us with are just not novel or surprising to modern paleontology. There were already supposed bite marks from failed attacks– e.g.:http://goo.gl/NvUEm

I believe teachers get better results if the student is at first interested in the subject. Ask any frustrated math teacher I’ve ever had. But if the student comes to you with an interest in the subject, even if based on misinformation, then you, the teacher can correct that child and teach them the facts (as we know them). John, what first peeked your interest in palaeontology? Weren’t you ever excited about anything as a child that carried over into adult life? Not every child is going to be a palaeontologist, or a piano player, or math teacher, so there’s no sense in grabbing the mass of children and trying to teach them all the facts; all the hard core, not-so-much-fun stuff that is the backbone of any discipline. I believe its better to select the ones that are already interested in the subject, even better if they are actually excited about it, and concentrating your efforts on teaching them. I remember reading about Darwin’s theory of evolution when I was about nine years old. I was shocked that someone had to “discover” this method of changing life on earth. I had always thought it was a given, that everybody knew and accepted this thing called evolution, though I had never thought about it as a subject of study, and would never had a name to pin on it if I had. It had always seemed such an obvious fact of nature to me (like why a cottontail rabbits tail seemingly disappears when it stops running) that I had never really thought much about it. But when I read about Darwin’s theory it wasn’t a laughing matter like when I read Newton “discovered” gravity. I remember thinking “How could you not notice gravity?” The news about this guy called Darwin discovering something that I just assumed everybody already knew really peeked my interest; it excited me (mainly because it dealt with animals) and I had to know more about it. It’s been a long and interesting road since, and I’ve learned a lot, and cast aside a lot of false childhood ideas, but if I hadn’t first been excited as a child, if something hadn’t attracted my interest to the point where I wanted to know more, no teacher could ever have crammed that subject down my throat.

I totally agree; paleontology is a great gateway to science, period. That’s what got me into it. But my point is more that there is tons of great science that is also exciting and novel out there. I don’t think we need to dress up non-controversies as controversies just to get kids excited in science. They deserve more respect than that. Look at the sad state of science education in the USA today; we need to do better. And it begins with presenting information accurately to the public.

I just noticed that all but my first comment have been listed as Paleoaerie rather than Joe Daniel. Paleoaerie is my foray at tilting at windmills 🙂 and public science communication. Right now it is a Facebook page and a nascent website, but I have plans on it being much more. Provided I can get it going the way I want, I may be contacting interested souls in posting essays to get current, accurate information out to the public.

[…] of John Hutchinson — who studies the biomechanics of large animals, including T.Rex. He says the “controversy” here doesn’t really exist. That’s because most carnivores are both predators and scavengers and most paleontologists […]

[…] Journalists have proven themselves to be the true scavengers, with not a hint of hesitation at feeding at putrefying stories that were better buried long ago. In a post reacting to the latest hype, John Hutchinson – who has done a great deal of work on T. rex running speed – perfectly expressed the sentiment so many feel when the obligate scavenger idea raises its gnarly head: […]

As a science reporter for The Associated Press I’m always eager to hear about legitimately exciting science that isn’t being reported in the lay press, but which would interest a general audience. You can reach me at mrittter@ap.org.

Great post, couldnt agree more. Said similar things about this being a nonissue when approached by journalists, who were appy for me to be blunt about he triviality of this. Sadly there are some scientists who still don’t get the fact that this ‘debate’ is pointless… You’re also spot on with regards to bird origins – we really don’t need any more Nature or Science papers on feathered coelurosaurs, though I would admit a feathered sauropodomorph would be shocking enough to warrant a high impact venue

It’s nice hearing how many colleagues agree, but I’m a bit worried by how many disagree and think that it’s valuable to “test” this hypothesis, if 1 bone can somehow really do that and implying that any goofy speculation deserves testing, and as if the hypothesis hadn’t already been demolished enough.

Anyway, glad to see some great paleo/related stuff out this week in PNAS (teleost phylogeny), PRSB (Nasutoceratops, remoras) and elsewhere– that’s something we can all celebrate! Condemn the bad, rejoice for the good science.

Buried under the scavenger issue here, is the question of whether a trex could run. Or if it could run as fast as, or faster than an elephant. This sums up what can go so very wrong in science.
I find it strange that this kind of question is even asked. One glance at the anatomy will answer the question in an instant. If you don’t know the answer, then you can’t see what’s in plain sight.
A flat footed elephant can run, but it doesn’t need to very often, and isn’t particularly good at the sprint.
A trex is standing on it’s toes, a lot like a bird, who are pretty good at turning on the speed. Being a hunter ( or is that a scavenger?) running for Trex would be rather useful, Despite all the size and weight issues, it’s clearly evolved to run.
I have no scientific qualifications, but maybe here that’s an advantage, as I don’t need to ask a question that has a glaringly obvious answer.

Hi Vince, the opinion you hold is one that is brought up to me fairly often by some non-scientists (and a few scientists). Whether T. rex ran extremely well, not very well, or not at all is a question I’ve tackled in my own research. Most of it is linked/described here- http://www.rvc.ac.uk/SML/Projects/TRex/Index.cfm

My response is that (1) what seems to have an obvious answer in science sometimes does not, (2) anatomy is often misleading about locomotion or other behaviours (there are many documented cases of this), so we bother testing such questions scientifically, and (3) features that seem to be “running adaptations” are good for other things, like economy or large home range sizes or efficient walking or just relicts of ancestry, so there is good reason to question whether a giant dinosaur could run very well. I think it is a much harder question than you’ve set it up as, but that’s what makes it fun and challenging for me and others in the field. However, I think we’ve settled more or less on a reasonable answer: that with certain assumptions (e.g. muscle size, strength, posture) it could run moderately well but not at 40mph speeds, but with other assumptions that are also plausible (equally plausible, perhaps), it might not have run at all or just quite slowly. The biomechanical studies show that the anatomy may not have been good enough, under the constraints of size/gravity, for fast running.

The benefit of applying science to this question is that it lays all your assumptions bare and allows anyone to reproduce them, rather than applying a subjective approach focused purely on qualitative anatomy, as Greg Paul and Bob Bakker have most famously done, which does not fully address its assumptions.

Now that’s a comprehensive reply! nicely done.
My view is based on what seems obvious, but is sometimes overlooked, in a mass of scientific conjecture.
For example,the whole bird/dinosaur link that’s become so polar today, looks in hindsight, flipping obvious when you look at the gross anatomy comparisons. But it was a long time before anyone made the link. Bakker I believe. That has of course benefited from subsequent fossil finds that strengthen the case.
The other theory that, in hindsight looks crazy, is the cold blooded hypothesis that persisted for a long time. Again, the anatomy was telling you otherwise in big capital letters all along.
London’s natural history museum is still today telling people that dinosaurs were reptiles, which is inaccurate. Unless you are going to redefine what constitutes a reptile that is. I’m of the opinion that Dinosaur constitutes an animal group along with, mammal, reptile, fish etc. Birds fit in to the dinosaur group, reptiles don’t.
I feel that the trex locomotion issue, whilst of course benefits from rigorous scientific analysis and hypothesis, for which you are doing a sterling job, to me at least appears to be what you would call a no brainer, ie, it ran. To what extent, is of course, open to question, but run it did and far better than an elephant.
I guess we’ll have to wait until someone sequences the DNA from the protein that’s been extracted from Trxes recently, and proves me correct with their cloned racing rex.

[…] for those that have said that Greater Krayt Dragons and such are thereby confined to a life as scavengers and nothing more, I would welcome them to explore the Jundland Wastes locales armoured by all the […]

[…] and when. There are plenty of cases of excessive spin and hype, my personal punching-bag being the humdrum T. rex “scavenger” nonsense, but I usually find it more rewarding to look for the value in scientific ideas and data than […]